TAL's Historians

This week's episode of This American Life is probably the best distillation and presentation of the seductive qualities of studying history. The episode begins with the eleven year old Adam Beckman, along with his brother and best friend, stumbling upon an abandoned house in a small town in New Hampshire. The house is filled with crumbling letters, cans and whiskey bottles from the Prohibition era, and tattered dresses and clothes that had been untouched for decades. What begins as an adventure with his brothers into a spooky, abandoned home, soon grows into an obsession with the house and its previous tenants, the Nasons.

Adam's description of his increasing obsession with the Nasons is one of the best description of the allure of historical research that I've ever heard. His encounter with real documents, and his imagination of the family's lives capture the allure of historical inquiry, how investigating the stories of people's lives can be addictive and insatiable, and how stories inevitably lead to further mysteries and questions, which in turn fuel further investigation.

The episode also illuminates difficulties of historical research. The ephemerality of documents and historical artifacts are front and center here, and reminds us that the fact that any historical documents even still exist are oftentimes accidents of history. The story also shows how difficult the practice of historical interpretation can be. How can we explain the disappearance of a family within larger historical movements, and situate those tiny dramas within changes in society.

Probably the most heart-wrenching part of the show, for me, was when Adam heard the neighbors and sons describe the historical artifacts, which he had carefully preserved and obsessed over in the past twenty years as "junk" or "crap." And perhaps that's the ultimate job of the historian -- to convince others that stories that are going to be tossed into oblivion are worth telling and preserving. Beckman certainly succeeds in doing so here. I would recommend everyone to download and listen to this episode (I think their mp3s stay free for a week for downloads).

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My Research

"Scene in a Chinese Opium Palace, San Francisco": From Harper's Weekly: Harper's Weekly, Vol. 24
The Chinese : Many Handed But Soulless" [cover]: From The Wasp: v. 15, July - Dec. 1885

Images are from the Library of Congress's website on American Memory, taken from the Bancroft Library, UC Berkeley.

Once again, I’ve left this blog out in the cold for a couple of months now. Really no excuses for the hiatus other than laziness and a serious case of writer’s block. But I’m going to try to be more diligent in updating this -- at least until my next 2-3 month silence.

Mr. G asked me to describe my dissertation research, so I’ll try my best to organize my scattered thoughts. I’m doing research on the German Christian missionary movement in China, starting roughly around the 1860s and ending in the 1930s.

If you pick up any missionary journal from the late 19th century and read its depiction of the China and the Chinese, the picture is negative and what we would now consider racist. The missionary journals mostly depict the Chinese as opium smoking polygamists, who sell their children into slavery and are blinded by their superstitions (the pictures above are from the US, but the sentiments flowed throughout the "West"). Confucianism is something that needs to be destroyed; it hinders the development and entry of China into the league of “modern” nations. A tone of triumphalism accompanies late 19th century missionary tomes -- the missionaries are confident that Christianity is going to sweep through China and transform it.

By the 1950s, missionary theologians and journals have lost this tone of triumphalism is gone. Christianity in China is considered a “failure,” and Confucianism is being studied and taught seriously in universities in the West. Chinese Christians, on the other hand, are calling for a complete separation between Chinese Christianity and its Western, or “imperialistic” influences.

I’m trying to figure out how this transformation occurred, and what larger implications the “failure” of Christianity in China had on ideas about Christianity in Germany. My hypothesis is that this “failure” of Christianity in China forced missionaries and mission theologians in Germany to re-conceptualize and re-think not only the missionary strategy, but the nature of the Christian message itself. I’m still not sure how this plays out, but I’m hoping I’ll have a clearer sense by the time I leave Germany in August.

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Some Thoughts on Opera

Watched Verdi's La Traviata last night, which was gloriously staged at the Deutsche Oper. My stay in Berlin this time around has been filled with opera, and I've really come to enjoy going to operas. This is a pretty new development for me -- I used to find operas long, the plots insufferably trite, the emotions overplayed. What I've realized is that time moves differently in operas; it's less a linear progression or narrative of time, but more a build-up of tension that finds release at certain musical moments. The build-up may meander, but the release makes it all worth it. The clip above pretty much sums up all of conflicted emotions. The cheesy dialogue, the over-wrought inner emotions, the unnecessary hand-wringing; but wow, isn't that aria (starting around 2:30 in the clip) divine? I think that's partly why Wagner can be so frustrating/interesting. In Tristan and Isolde he plays with all these expectations of tensions and release, never really giving us a final resolution until literally the final chord in the piece. It's infuriating but intriguing, boring yet divine.

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Berlin Again

I've been in Berlin for a little over two months now. I've had ambivalent feelings about Berlin in the past, as my past two extended stays here were not so pleasant. But just this past week, as I was walking towards the library (where I spend most of my days), I thought to myself -- I actually like this city!

A big part of the change in heart stems from my new living condition. The last time I was here, I was living in really cheap housing, but it was an old, unrenovated Berlin apartment, and I was constantly freezing, and the bathroom did not have convenient showering facilities (or barely had any facilities at all). There was no internet, the phone didn't really work, and I felt isolated, lonely, and homesick. This time around, I’m living in a lovely apartment, centrally located. I’m part of a program, so there’s a community here that I’m enjoying. My mom has also been here since early October, and I’ve really enjoyed having her here, even though now it may be her turn to feel a bit homesick.

And oh my, the culture! Some of the music that I’ve heard in the past two months: Fly Trio, Miguel Zenon Quintet (which was AMAZING live), Mozart’s Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Wagner’s Tannhäuser and Lohengrin, the Berlin Philharmonic with Ivan Fischer and Simon Rattle playing Brahms, Schönberg and other major works. Wagner’s works have been a particular revelation. I never thought that I would be able to sit through a complete Wagner opera, but each time I’ve been quite engrossed by the music and the new interpretations and stagings.

I’m also a lot more confident in my linguistic abilities this time around. I’m still not fluent, and can’t express all of my ideas fluently, but I feel great in terms of comprehension, both aural and visual.

So all in all, a good start to the research trip here, and I’m looking forward to the next couple of months here. I’ll try to post more often, and update more on ideas about research and the cultural stuff that I’ve been seeing. But I’m feeling good about being here, which is a far cry from the apprehension I felt in August, when I was moving out of Berkeley.

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Istanbul

I can't quite figure out what it was about Istanbul that resonated so deeply with me. Perhaps I'm just a sucker for touristy trinkets and architectural monuments, which Istanbul is filled with. I'm also attracted to crowds -- and boy is Istanbul crowded. But there's something about the sights, the sounds, and the smells, that stirred a certain feeling of comfort, of belonging -- even though I couldn't understand anything written or uttered on the street. The Egyptian Spice Market reminded me of the traditional Taiwanese markets that I used to roam in when I was a kid, and the streets of the bazaar evoked memories of Taiwanese street vendors, lining the sidewalks with their fake brand names and wares.

The Hagia Sophia was my favorite site that we visited. The fusion of all the different historical elements and religions -- Christian, Muslim, secular -- was evident and on full display. The minarets, fused and standing next to the Romanesque arches, are testaments to the complicated intersections and interweaving of Christian and Muslim histories, and a challenge to those who demagogically claim that a clash between these two civilizations is a historical inevitability and necessity. It was a personal reminder to why I love the study of history.

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Turkey

Egyptian Spice Market
Originally uploaded by albertowu2002

I just got back from five day trip to Turkey -- spent most of the time in Istanbul and a couple of days in Ankara. I'll try to post some pictures and stories on this blog when I get everything together.

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Thoughts on Religion and Civic Association

Paul Katz, writing for the group blog The China Beat, reports on the disaster relief efforts in response to Typhoon Morakot, which pummeled southern Taiwan this past weekend. Katz points out that the most active organizations in helping with disaster relief are religious organizations, such as the Buddhist Compassion Relief Merit Society (Fojiao Ciji gongdehui 佛教慈濟功德會), Foguang Shan, the Taiwanese Presbyterian Church, and World Vision.

Ever since I took an intellectual history class on Alexis de Tocqueville when I was an undergraduate, I've been interested in the functions of civil associations that operate apart from the state. I've been particularly interested in how religious organizations differ from secular ones as sites of mobilization for political purposes. For the class, I wrote a final paper on secular and religious forms of mobilization, arguing that religious organizations played a vital part in the landscape for political and religious mobilization. When talking over the paper, my professor asked me a question that stumped me -- when it comes to dealing with issues of a non-religious nature, what is it that a religious organization does that a secular humanist organization can't? In other words, when it comes to disaster relief, what difference does it make that a Christian or Buddhist organization (like Ciji or Catholic Relief Services) is heading the disaster relief, as opposed to one that is completely secular (like Doctors without Borders)? I still don't have a good answer to that question.

Part of my fascination with missionaries stems from this desire to answer this question -- how exactly does religion make a difference? Why do people become missionaries? Do people, who claim to be motivated by religion, act in a different way than people who don't?

As Katz points out, one of the most inspiring thing is seeing the Internet emerge as the dominant site for quick and fast mobilization. We saw this happen with the Iranian elections a couple of months back as well. It will be interesting to track how the Internet augments and challenges more "traditional" forms of voluntary associational life.

Here's hoping all the best for the recovery in southern Taiwan.

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